There are two commonly accepted views about command-and-control (CAC) environmental regulation. First, CAC delivers environmental outcomes at very high cost. Second, in a developing country with weak regulatory institutions, CACs may not even yield environmental benefits: regulators can force...

This paper examines the effect of stringent environmental regulations on firms' environmental practices, economic performance, and environmental innovation. Reducing COD levels by 10% relative to 2005 levels is an aim of the Chinese 11th Five-Year Plan. Using a difference-in-differences...

Does the impact of environmental regulation differ by plant vintage and technology? We answer this question using annual Census Bureau information on 116 pulp and paper mills' vintage, technology, productivity, and pollution abatement operating costs for 1979-1990. We find a significant negative...

This paper treats programs in which firms voluntarily agree to meet environmental standards as "green clubs": clubs, because they provide non-rival but excludable reputation benefits to participating firms; green, because they also generate environmental public goods. The model illuminates a...

This paper explores abatement investment and location responses to environmental policy, which takes the form of emission taxes or tradeable emission permits and subsidies against the costs of abatement investment, under uncertainty and irreversibility. Uncertainty is associated with output...

We study the effect of the diffusion of photovoltaic (PV) systems on the fraction of votes obtained by the German Green Party in federal elections. Using both regional and household survey data, we show that households that adopted PV systems became more supportive of the Green Party. We...

We use an innovative methodology to measure management practices in over 300 manufacturing firms in the UK. We then match this management data to production and energy usage information for establishments owned by these firms. We find that establishments in better managed firms are significantly...

In many regulated markets, private, third-party auditors are chosen and paid by the firms that they audit, potentially creating a conflict of interest. This paper reports on a two-year field experiment in the Indian state of Gujarat that sought to curb such a conflict by altering the market...

The economic costs of environmental regulations have been widely debated since the U.S. began to restrict pollution emissions more than four decades ago. Using detailed production data from nearly 1.2 million plant observations drawn from the 1972-1993 Annual Survey of Manufactures, we estimate...

For political, jurisdictional and technical reasons, environmental regulation of industrial pollution is often incomplete: regulations apply to only a subset of facilities contributing to a pollution problem. Policymakers are increasingly concerned about the emissions leakage that may occur if...